What if Yamaha and Access teamed up to make synths?

[Jay Vaughan]

>> I think its hilarious ..
> 
> Looks very nice, too :-)

He even used the Access knobs, which are custom-designed just for Access/Kemper.  I think the concept is awesome, even though I do know for sure that the idea is .. lets say .. quite old.  ;)  It would be wonderful indeed for the Indigo form-factor to sort of be ‘standardized’ and yet used as the basis for a lot more variety in the synth-engine department.  Lets see him do a “what if SoundArt made an Indigo-style Chameleon 2” ..

So yeah .. I think any of these designs could be re-purposed as ‘general interface’ for an open-synth platform .. i.e. imagine that there was just one ultimate format of this design language, and it allowed developers to bring whatever they wanted to the table, app-store style.  

It’s gonna happen.  

I’m fairly sure that Paul M and his team get it, I’m fairly sure that Novation gets it, and I’m quite sure that the traditional synth guys get it: the writing is on the wall.  Eventually everyone in the musical-instrument business is going to have to compete with the iPad.  So the hardware/hybrid musical companies are either going to be opening this door: competing as complete instruments above the capabilities of Apple, or just giving up and writing software and leaving Apple to take over this market segment.  Its already happened, and it will happen again: Apple are the biggest musical-instrument manufacturer, at the moment. 

The reason is: they build a platform.  The little guys in the music segment: build instruments.  On the platform/instrument scale, there are all sorts of bendy bits.

Prediction: In 2015 we will see tens of ‘more open app store’ gardens in this world.  We don’t *have* to succumb to the desire to just get an indigo-format design set up that you can slide an iPad into .. or, then again, maybe that’s the best of all possible worlds in this setup.  

Could also be that there is something very important, necessary, and special to the concept of having a complete, mutable, synthesizer design concept and just leave it at the “this is a functioning musical instrument device” point.  

And then again .. Yamaha are pretty good at taking all the general stuff and putting it in a custom box, so .. if this idea gets traction and the folks in Japan get the idea put to them, maybe a Korg/Yamaha App-store *will* happen, we’ll have these indigo-style ‘design formats’ to contend with, and it’ll be a dream finally come true: life is fiction, after all.

;)

j.